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“Social Engineering” – the other security threat

These days we all worry about account security – people breaking in to our Facebook, getting in to Gmail, hacking Twitter.

Often the worry is that someone will either guess our password or hack into a website and obtain our login details directly. However, worryingly it is possible for hackers to obtain access to your accounts without ever knowing your password.

Wired journalist Mat Honan suffered a huge hack recently – the attackers ultimately wanted to gain control of his “mat@” Twitter account – but on the way they gained access to his accounts at Amazon, Google and Apple. And to prevent him regaining control of his digital life they remotely wiped his iPhone, iPad and MacBook – thereby deleting the only copy of photos of the first year of his child.

The majority of the methods that the hackers employed to achieve this were “social engineering” – basically “people-hacking” – manipulating people and company processes to gain unauthorised access.

How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking – Read the full article here on Wired